Rumour: 10-inch Amazon Kindle Fire to launch by year end?

The Gadget Show  Friday 30 September 2011

This week saw the launch of the hot new Amazon Kindle Fire, the online retailer’s long-awaited 7-inch Android tablet. But those in the know are saying it’s the larger 10-inch model that will be the real knockout, and the latest rumours are suggesting it could be a lot closer to launching than we previously thought.

The Kindle Fire was unveiled in New York on Wednesday, and while Amazon quickly broke our hearts by telling us we won’t be seeing it in the UK anytime soon, as die-hard gadget fans we can’t help being excited all the same.

After all, this is a full-blown Android Honeycomb tablet for an incredible $199, blowing the iPad 2 and everything else out of the water on the value for money stakes.

But while you have to make a few sacrifices along the way – there’s no camera or 3G, for instance – consensus is that another Android tablet is on its way, while will have a larger 10-inch screen and a far more high-end spec, including potentially even a quad-core processor.

Well the latest report from Taiwanese industry news service DigiTimes isn’t saying anything about that, but it does claim that the big-screened slate could be with us before the end of the year, rather than early next year as most reports until now have suggested.

Of course, by “us” we don’t know if that really is “us” – the current evidence isn’t promising – but we’ll keep our gadget-loving fingers crossed all the same.